


to get drenched is our choice, not the sky's victory or defeat

by inkwelled



Category: Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Fic, Loss, Post-War, Self-Sacrifice, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 16:02:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12172179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkwelled/pseuds/inkwelled
Summary: Snow, she's found, is very much like Steve Trevor.





	1. how it descends

**Author's Note:**

> title from [soft whose arrows are](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1647248/soft-whose-arrows-are/) by snehith kumbla
> 
> edit 3/24/18: i went back in my docs and found i had extended the story further from what i published originally so i added it in and changed the title to something more fitting

Snow, she's found, is very much like Steve Trevor.  

A gift of nature that happens too fast, something enough to make her ache, and gone too soon. Her first snowfall is that night in Veld, a tiny village bustling with people hardened with war but softened with the knowledge they're freed, and she sways with him in her arms. Then the snow begins, slow and cold and falling down around her and brushing her skin like the kisses from a lover, and she's in love.  

Whether it's the man in her arms or the snowfall remains to be seem, but later, as she draws him into her arms and embraces this yearning of her skin and they're tangled in sheets and he whispers reverences into her smooth skin, she decides it's Steve Trevor.  

The next morning comes too soon and he presses a kiss into her shoulder as they dress, the room around them seemingly bigger as the world stretches in front of them; endless and vast and full of possibilities, and she lets her _dream._ She thinks of a newspaper and its folds, coffee poured into smooth-handled mugs worn with time and kisses pressed to cheeks. She dreams of kids, ones not shaped by clay but by love, ones with her hair and Steve’s eyes, and the sudden clarity of it all leaves her gasping for breath. 

By her side, her lover sleeps on, but in that tiny village of Veld, on the night two become one and clothes are no longer a barrier, she comes to the realization that _this_ is love, this is the feeling mortals crave and will kill and die for, and she _understands._  

Despite everything, despite the knowledge that tomorrow everything will either end in fire or snow, she allows herself to _imagine._  

But like all things, the light of day shatters their escape and all too soon, Steve is taken from her with fire and brimstone and she's left cold, too cold, heart in her throat and cut into tiny pieces, and later she'll wonder if this is how it goes.  

They fall in love under the snow, close and intimate, and he falls within fire, far from her reach and even now, untouchable. 

 

 

 

They search the rubble for hours, coming through every piece of twisted metal and sifting through shredded pieces of bombs that once held the deadliest gas in human history and now hold only wisps of the former passengers within.

Like the plane they find.

The largest piece only two feet big and it’s a door, and she spends an eternity staring at it, running her fingers softly over the gouges carved deeply into the surface and wonders if this is her heart; shot out of the sky and now laid to rest in a grave of ashes.

 

 

 

There’s an empty grave on the outskirts of the tiny town of Veld, somewhere so small it’s barely on a map, and even as people come in and bury the residents and rebuild the houses and make it as historical sight complete with a copy of a yellowed photograph inside the church at the middle of town, she still finds herself there each year.

A year after everything, she returns, a watch on her wrist and a sleeping bundle in her arms, and she sits by that empty grave and just stares.

She doesn’t cry until later, until she’s in a hotel in Veld that replaced the one they slept in a year ago, and her tears are silent, as to not wake her son, and each year when she leaves that room even with the knowledge she’ll return, she still leaves a piece of her heart behind every time.


	2. parachuting an expansive heart

Trevor Zeus Prince is born three months before his father’s death anniversary, and Etta is by her side for every step, every diaper, feeding bottle, first step, _first word_ and Charlie is the one who teaches him to play the piano while Chief tells him bedtime stories and Sameer inspires a love to learn and adapt in him, and she sits back one day and watches it all.

So maybe it’s not her and Steve’s imaginary future; one made up under a snowfall in a town long gone now, existing simply in memory, and maybe the newspapers on the dinner table are coloring books instead and coffee is sipped from chipped and hand-painted mugs and it’s her best friend pressing a kiss to her cheek instead of her love, but it’s something she wouldn’t trade for the world.

Trevor is everything his father was and always will be; courageous and selfless and a little cheeky and confident, but he’s so much _more_. He inherits her sense of goodness and he picks up little things through his honorary aunt and uncles. He has her dark, curly hair but his father’s endless ocean eyes, and he’s a singer like Uncle Charlie, a storyteller like Chief, an actor and smooth-talker like his Uncle Sameer, but he also enjoys shopping with Aunt Etta and going to museums with all of them.

 

 

 

Trevor has always known about his father; has always known the story his Uncle Chief used to tell him at night in hushed tones as to not clue in his mother; has always known of the selfless pilot who sacrificed himself to save millions of others and saved the world.

He’s always known his face; the framed picture that hangs on the wall and in the locket around his mother’s neck; has always known his personality and demise and everything in-between, but he doesn’t know of his mother’s role until he’s much older; nearing the end of school and grown into the lanky form he gets from his father.

On a stormy night his mother sits them down at the table and for the first time in his life, he hears the whole story. 

He hears of an island of warrior women, the pilot who crashed there, the young woman who stood up for him and sailed into an uncertain future by his side. They sit at the table for hours, and his mother’s tone is light and airy as she spins this tale of love and time, but her face tells more, things her voice can’t. 

The way her eyes search the room at his name, the subtle shifting of her fingers when she tells him of their fight outside a tiny village tainted yellow, the twisting and tapping of her fingers when she finally reaches the end, and how her fingertips search out the watch on her wrist with every nostalgic word. 

Trevor hugs his mother close and she breaks, something she hasn’t done in years, and confesses everything; how the guilt she wasn’t fast enough, good enough, _godly_ enough to save him before he pulled that trigger and sealed his fate and saved countless others. 

The next year, he accompanies his mother to an empty grave on the outskirts of a tiny village once called Veld, and sits by her side, arm around her shoulder as they simply _sit._

 

 

 

The world is still, and all is right, and the watch on her wrist keeps ticking.


End file.
